Motawi Tileworks has an open book policy, and its founder says that saved the company in 2009.

Now, amid the Ann Arbor ceramic tile maker's best-ever sales and with an eye for future expansion, Nawal Motawi said she would do the same if another recession struck.

"When we were in trouble in 2009, I threw the books open," said Motawi, 54, also owner and artistic director. "It was very powerful, because (the employees) came up with things that were great coming from them, but would have been ugly coming from me (to cut costs). For instance, a couple people volunteered to clean our offices. So we got rid of the office cleaning person."

The company that started out of a garage in 1992 had grown to 26 employees by then. But it found itself with sales around 30 percent below planned, amid the Great Recession. Employees worked together to slash expenses, Motawi said, and hours were cut by 10 percent, with layoffs avoided.

With more economic warning flags cropping up and some economists projecting a 2021 tipping point, according to the Washington Post, it's not out of the question that Tileworks could be rationing its expenditures again within the next couple of years.

"The books are open, so everyone's gonna see it coming," she said.

Motawi credits the open book policy with helping drive employee interest in keeping the company profitable, though it requires education so they don't misinterpret where money goes. She shares financial information and doles out bonuses when Tileworks outperforms.

Open book management, paired with attention to distinctive craftsmanship and a Toyota-style approach to production based on continuous improvement, are main contributors to Tileworks' rise, Motawi said.

From origins as a solo artist, Motawi is now head of an operation with $3.3 million in sales and 14 percent profitability this fiscal year — its highest yet for both categories. Sales rose 22 percent over the previous year and profitability rose 79 percent.

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Nawal Motawi

This past year Tileworks sold 15,362 square feet of tile. Production is down from 2011, when the company sold 16,282 square feet. But a move to install more tile in-house and stop selling installation tiles wholesale to showrooms has "increased profitability significantly," marketing coordinator Rebecca Jackson said in an email.

Motawi Tileworks self-distributes to 344 locations in more than 14 states and Canada. Locally, it sells at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Greenfield Village in Dearborn and the Ann Arbor Art Center, among others, according to its website.

‘Ann Arbor history'

Motawi started her business in 1992, making tiles out of a garage, and first sold at a farmers' market in Ann Arbor. Her brother Karim Motawi became involved in the garage days, but she bought him out around 2009.

Nawal trained and worked in the late 1980s at Pewabic Pottery, the nonprofit Detroit ceramics studio and school that also produces art tiles.

To the untrained eye, Motawi's tiles may remind one of Pewabic's.

"But I'll never be able to sell a piece of Detroit history," she said. "I'm Ann Arbor history at this point."

Motawi considers herself a Pewabic "protégé," but sees their tile styles as different, citing examples including Pewabic's focus on relief tiles — most of which Tileworks has dropped — and how Tileworks creates multicolored pieces, whereas Pewabic doesn't as often. Also, Motawi is manning a for-profit company.

The popularity of the art form lies in the intersection of decoration and practicality. It is a durable, technical art form with origins in 9,000 BCE, around when ceramic products became prolific in Europe and the Middle East, according to the American Ceramic Society. Glazed pottery production started later, around 3,000 BCE, in Mesopotamia and its introduction as an art form came centuries later in Greece.

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Motawi Tileworks

Motawi Tileworks kiln-fires its art tiles in Ann Arbor after pressing the clay into tile shape with a plaster mold.

Now, "traditional ceramics" are "ubiquitous," according to the society. The global glass and ceramics industry hit $800 billion in 2018 and is expected to range up to nearly $1.1 trillion in 2023. As in all manufacturing, technology continues to evolve, with the introduction of 3-D printing for ceramics in recent years and use of nanotechnology to introduce less conventional materials to make, for example, transparent ceramics, the ACS said on its website.

Tileworks, however, keeps things simpler.

At its 13,000-square-foot studio west of downtown Ann Arbor, tile designs are first etched into wax by a machine to make master rubber molds. Those are used to produce plaster molds. Workers then machine-press clay into shape. They fire tiles in kilns and hand-glaze them before a last firing. The company makes art tiles for individual display, as well as simpler installation tiles as part of larger decorative murals or backdrops in homes or public buildings.

"The art tiles take more time so we make a little less volume, but sell more dollars worth," Motawi said.

She employs three installation designers, and oversees individual tile design. Some of the designs are based on work licensed from Frank Lloyd Wright, Yoshiko Yamamoto and others.

The Ann Arbor studio features a gallery open to the public and also sells through its website at motawi.com.

Recent large projects include making donor tiles for a University of Michigan endowment fund and for a commemorative piece by Stickley Furniture Inc. Tileworks declined to release details on the contracts.

Tileworks owns its clay supplier, Rovin Ceramics, which sells clay and pottery tools mostly to schools and other organizations. It acquired Rovin in 2011 because the company would have closed otherwise.

At the manufacturing hub, Motawi employs 40 — "about as many as we can fit in the building," she said.

Asked about expansion, she said it's something she sees for the future but it "means going into debt all over again."